How To Release Trauma from the Body 🧠
5 Tools to Regulate Your Nervous System and Recover from Chronic Stress (7min Read)
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TL;DR Summary
Anxious Achievers are often stuck in a chronic stress cycle—pushing through exhaustion, feeling wired but tired, and struggling to relax.
Trauma isn't just big, obvious events. It’s also chronic emotional neglect, relentless pressure, and the nervous system getting stuck in survival mode.
Step 1: External safety → Step 2: Internal safety → Step 3: Activating the parasympathetic nervous system.
Three of my favorite neuroscience-backed tools: The Hero’s Body framework, Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, and HRV/Vagus Nerve training.
Your body holds onto stress like a “workload debt”—but you CAN reset your nervous system.
Trauma in the Brain & Body
If you’re an Anxious Achiever, you know this feeling:
Pushing through exhaustion because there’s always more to do.
Struggling to relax, even on weekends or vacations.
Feeling like your body is stuck in overdrive, but your brain is foggy.
Crashing hard when you finally stop working, but never feeling truly rested.
Feeling like you’re only as good as your last achievement.
This cycle isn’t just stress—it’s a trauma response inside your nervous system that gets wired into your body.
Chronic stress like this takes a toll on your body, and today we’re talking about what you can do to rewire this response & release it from your body!
By the end of today’s blog, you’ll know how to help your body actually recover.
Let’s get started!
Why Trauma Gets Stuck in the Bodies of Anxious Achievers
We often think of trauma as something that happens to other people—like car accidents or childhood abuse.
But trauma isn’t just what happened to you, and it’s not just huge events like natural disasters.
It’s also what never happened but should have.
Never feeling “good enough,” no matter how much you achieve.
Growing up with conditional love—only feeling valued when you excel.
Learning to suppress your needs to avoid disappointing others.
Feeling like you can’t rest, because you’ll fall behind.
This kind of chronic, low-grade stress keeps the brain in survival mode, where it becomes wired for hypervigilance, overachievement, and emotional suppression.
The Science: How Trauma Gets Stuck in the Body
Before we talk about releasing trauma, let’s answer the big question:
How does trauma even get stuck in the body?
As always, let’s take a peek inside the brain to find out.
When we experience trauma, our nervous system floods with stress chemicals like cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine—shifting us into survival mode.
For some, this is a one-time event.
For others, chronic stress and repeated trauma make this their brain’s default state.
Think of it like a stuck gear in a car.
Instead of shifting back to neutral (relaxed), the brain stays revved up in a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response.
Polyvagal Theory & The “Traffic Light” of Trauma
The Polyvagal Theory is one of the leading theories about how trauma gets stored in the body and nervous system.
It suggests that our nervous system shifts between 3 different zones:
Green Zone (Safe & Social) → Calm, connected, and regulated.
Yellow Zone (Fight or Flight) → Alert, anxious, hypervigilant.
Red Zone (Freeze & Shutdown) → Numb, dissociated, depressed.
Our goal? To move back down to green.
Anxious Achievers often live stuck in the yellow zone—mentally tired, but physically wired.
Your brain has adapted to stress as a normal state.
This is why rest feels uncomfortable and why you might:
Feel anxious when you’re not being productive.
Struggle with perfectionism and imposter syndrome.
Experience insomnia, brain fog, and chronic tension.
So how do we reset the system and release stored stress?
I’m glad you asked!
Step 1: External Safety – The Foundation of Recovery
Can you imagine being told to swim while you're drowning? Seems ridiculous right?
It’s the same with healing after trauma.
If you’re drowning in chronic stress, there’s no way to swim to safety.
You can’t heal your nervous system if your environment keeps triggering more stress.
For an Anxious Achiever, this might look like:
Toxic work environments where success is never enough.
Unrealistic expectations from yourself or others.
Lack of boundaries, leading to overwork and burnout.
Your nervous system needs external signals of safety before it will be willing to open up, and allow you to start to heal.
That means:
Protecting downtime—turning off notifications, and setting work-life boundaries.
Removing chronic stressors—changing environments, reducing obligations.
Reframing rest as productive—because recovery boosts performance.
A simple phrase to tell your nervous system: “I am safe to rest.”
I know these things are easier said than done, trust me.
An easy way to start is by turning on your “Do Not Disturb” for short bursts.
It doesn’t have to be long at first, but by doing this even just for 30 minutes, you’ll show your nervous system that the world doesn’t end if you don’t see a message right away!
Step 2: Internal Safety – Finding a Calm Anchor Inside
Once your external world has more breathing room, the next step is teaching your body to recognize safety.
Ask yourself:
Is there any part of me that feels safe, even a little?
Can I find a small pocket of calm anywhere?
Even a tiny sense of ease can act as an anchor for your nervous system.
This could be your earlobe, your elbow, or any place in or around your body that doesn’t feel like it’s stressed.
This teaches your brain that not everything or everywhere is a threat.
Another trick I use with my clients is creating an internal safe space.
Imagine a mental space—a cozy library, a quiet cabin, a beach at sunrise.
The more senses you engage, the better.
What does this place smell like? Sound like? Can you taste anything?
This step helps shift your body from hypervigilance to relaxation.
Plus, once you make it, it’s with you 24/7!
This 'felt sense' of safety is like a healing balm, and allows your nervous system to begin realizing that it’s gonna be alright.
Step 3: Activating the Parasympathetic Nervous System
This is where the deep healing happens.
When you’re in a regulated state, this is the system that clears out stress chemicals and starts the recovery process.
Anxious Achievers often feel like they have to EARN rest though, so they never truly get to this recovery phase.
They gas pedal their nervous system so hard that they move into the Red Zone and crash, but crashing like this isn’t a rest.
And it for sure doesn’t help clear out the stress chemicals that you’re bathing your nervous system in daily.
I’ve got lots of tools below to help you actually get into the Green Zone, but here are a couple that you can use right away to recalibrate your body’s stress response:
Shake off excess energy: If you feel stuck in overdrive, try stomping your feet, shaking your arms, or jumping up and down.
Cool water resets the system: Washing your hands in cool water stimulates the vagus nerve, pulling you into a parasympathetic state.
Alright, let’s move into some tools now!
Releasing Trauma – My Top 3 Science-Backed Tools
Now that you understand that you need external safety first and then a felt sense of internal safety to finally start turning on your body’s natural healing system, the parasympathetic nervous system, it’s time to talk about some tools that can help you get there!
1. Body Budget
Your mind, brain, and body are separate but inseparable.
That means, if your body is outta whack, your mind and brain are gonna feel it!
Your body budget is a set of 6 elements that help your nervous system thrive inside your body!
Sleep: Trauma healing requires 7-9 hours of sleep—and sleeping on your right side may boost REM processing.
Nutrition: Your gut and brain are connected—Omega-3s, magnesium, and Vitamin D3 can support emotional resilience.
Exercise: Even a short walk helps release stored trauma from your muscles.
Mind: Meditation, gratitude, journaling—tools that help shift you into a parasympathetic state.
Social Connection: Oxytocin from social bonding counteracts stress—yes, even just eye contact helps.
Play: Play stimulates the brain’s reward system, helping release tension.
Having simple habits & routines in each of these areas that you protect like your life depends on it is crucial!
2. Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy
You didn’t really think we’d get through a whole blog without me mentioning IFS, did you?
IFS can help you get to the root cause of your anxious overachievement by finding the hidden Parts of you in the driver’s seat!
In IFS terms, these Parts come in 3 flavors:
Managers → Perfectionism, people-pleasing, workaholism, inner critic.
Firefighters → Numbing behaviors (overworking, binge-watching, stress eating, drugs, alcohol, porn).
Exiles (Your Deepest Wounds) → Suppressed feelings of inadequacy or failure (Rejection, Abandonment, Terror, Pain).
Getting to know these Parts of you can help you recover faster than just continuing to let them run your life.
There is a calm, peaceful, regulated Self inside of each of us, we were born this way, we just forget what it feels like and didn’t know how to lead our Parts when we were younger!
This kind of internal Self-leadership can help you release trauma by going to your most traumatized Parts, and pulling them out of the past so they don’t have to stress you out so much in the present anymore.
3. HRV & The Vagus Nerve
Heart Rate Variability is an indicator of our emotional flexibility and vagal tone.
This is important because our vagus nerve is the master regulator of our parasympathetic nervous system!
Hopefully, by now you’re starting to understand that turning this on, is how you start to release trauma from the body.
As I talked about in my HRV blog, techniques like Heart Coherence Breathing can boost your HRV, and activate your vagus nerve!
And measuring your HRV is a great way to objectively track your mental and emotional health, which is why I get each of my clients a Whoop.
If these kinds of tools intrigue you, I cover nearly 30 more tools in my free “How to Release Trauma” guide.
Final Thoughts – You Can Rewire This
Anxious Achievers don’t just think their way into burnout—their nervous system learns overdrive as normal.
But you CAN rewire your stress response.
With science-backed tools, you can move from chronic stress to true resilience.
I’ve done it myself, and helped hundreds of others do it for themselves as well!
Let this blog be your first step.
I believe in you!
See you next week and until then… Live Heroically. 🧠
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Supporting Research
Complex PTSD and Trauma:
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery. Basic Books.
Neurochemical Responses to Trauma:
Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why zebras don't get ulcers: The acclaimed guide to stress, stress-related diseases, and coping. Holt paperbacks.
Polyvagal Theory:
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Processing:
Ecker, B., Ticic, R., & Hulley, L. (2012). Unlocking the emotional brain: Eliminating symptoms at their roots using memory reconsolidation. Routledge.
Reticular Activating System and Safety:
Buzsáki, G. (2006). Rhythms of the Brain. Oxford University Press.
Engage the Parasympathetic:
McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the western world. Yale University Press.
Regulation Tools:
Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation. Bantam.
Neuroscience-Based Healing Tools:
Thoma, M. V., La Marca, R., Brönnimann, R., Finkel, L., Ehlert, U., & Nater, U. M. (2013). The effect of music on the human stress response. PloS one, 8(8), e70156.
Davidson, R. J., & McEwen, B. S. (2012). Social influences on neuroplasticity: stress and interventions to promote well-being. Nature neuroscience, 15(5), 689-695.
Hanson, R. (2009). Buddha's brain: The practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom. New Harbinger Publications.
Neurofeedback & Biofeedback:
Hammond, D. C. (2011). What is neurofeedback: An update. Journal of Neurotherapy, 15(4), 305-336.
Thank you for such a comprehensively informative post , Cody. It's clear that you have mastered this path and teach it beautifully.
My only constructive feedback is that since it's sooooo much information, I would have loved this presentation as a 3-part series so that I could digest and savor each impactful section (just my personal preference).
Thanks , Cody, keep up the good work! ✨🥰🙏
Honestly, Buddhist practice has brought me to green in recent years when i got out of an unstable environment. Man. This was eye opening.